State of the Discussion

They're a sink.

People work hard writing an essay on the importance of a fuzz pedal for electric guitars and WHAMMO there's a link to how an Italian senator who was famous for, ahem, adult movies in the early 70s has offered Saddam Hussein sexual favors in exchange for peace.

And now the comments to this essay about the fuzz pedal has a subsection devoted to whether it's culturally insensitive to offer meaningless sex to Muslims with a subsubsection devoted to whether this has ever worked arguing against people who make jokes like "when has this ever *NOT* worked?" and the person who wrote the original essay about the fuzz pedal just wanted to talk about music, man.

He tried to negotiate in front of the world and show Trump up. He just bungled it.

The rumor I heard was that Zelensky met with the Democrats who explained that they could vote more money for him, more support, he just had to stand up to Trump and prove it could be done. Give Trump an L and we can help you!

And, wouldn't you know it, the Dems' mouths wrote checks that Z's ass was unable to cash. He went to Europe and got all of the moral support he could have asked for and more. Moral support and three bucks will get you a tall latte.

And the worst part is that the American People are getting a little sick of the Ukraine thing. "Send them *MORE* money? Ugh. Why?" and getting a moralizing speech in return is, apparently, not working.

Did you see Harry Enten's segment on CNN explaining the difference between the numbers for Biden and Trump on handling Ukraine/Russia?

-Trump's net approval on Russia/Ukraine (+2) is far more positive than Biden's was by the end (-22).
-The share (31% to 50%) who want a compromise in the war is way up
-The share who say Russia is an enemy is way down (64% to 34%).

The segment went on for a bit and explained that a majority of Americans supported Ukraine in the conflict... but it looks like that support amounts to moral support and, well, I already made a latte comment.

There are a handful of arguments that it might be possible to make about how it's important for the US to support Ukraine *MATERIALLY* and send them another few hundred billion. "It is in the US's best interest that Russia lose and internalize having lost" is probably the foremost to come to mind... but few are making it. "We have a *MORAL OBLIGATION* to fight against *TYRANNY* by sending *MONEY*!" makes a lot of assumptions that aren't shared and fewer people share them today than shared them yesterday.

And if even fewer people are going to share those assumptions tomorrow...

That sounds like a cool idea but way too complicated for my household especially with the biggest having baseball practice for his travel team on Fridays. I'm staring straight down the barrel of kraft mac and cheese, scrambled eggs, and probably that most traditional of all Lenten cuisine, the filet-o-fish.

I'll do a few minor mortifications and am looking forward to doing morning prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. I could, theoretically, never stop doing morning prayer and therefore never need to look forward to picking it up again... but that's why Lent is Lent. It reminds us that we stopped doing morning prayers for no particular reason.

I'm not doing the Hallow 40 challenge ... I checked it out a couple (few?) years ago and thought it was fine, but I'm just not that into listening to people read morning prayer to me. I did like the section I did on St. Francis de Sales -- he was a mensch.

On the technology front, I really like that they've finally figured out how to get the Hours into an app format -- younger generations will no longer understand our references to finding the proper for such and such a day -- but in turning it in to an app that keeps track of all the different feasts and saints days for various readings, it has the (necessary) deficit of including absolutely everything that you're *supposed* to do, including the many things that *nobody* does... so it's a little distracting to skip this bit, do that bit, and then skip this other bit. What I *really* want is a fully customizable app so I can tell it to drop the Hymn, don't repeat the antiphon in the middle of the canticle, and drop all of these alternate things in favor of the one that we always use. And, for all that is Holy, the doxology should be: "... as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be..." not that other way some people with questionable aesthetics have substituted. Maybe that's how I make my billions. If only the algorithm for getting all the proper readings in order wasn't so impossibly difficult.

You keep making assertions about non-members that aren't true.

Could you rephrase your statements to be about you instead of about the group at large? Maybe that would help.

No, you should not treat blood libel against *ANYBODY* in good faith.

And, again, if we're thinking that there was a conspiracy against Leo Frank to convict him despite his innocence and multiple appeals that goes all the way to the Supreme Court, that makes *US* the "Truthers" and you should have a *LOT* more sympathy for people who believe in conspiracies against innocent people than you do.

Macron has too many of his own problems and France is too small and limited in its ability to project power.

Unfortunately as was proven with Merkel last go 'round it's the US or no one.

I wish people would stop comparing Trump to Chamberlain.

Chamberlain was too soft on Hitler, but that's because he was worried that another Great War would destroy the British Empire (which is fair, since it did).

The 1930s English politician that you want to compare Trump to is Oswald Mosley.

https://www.mediamatters.org/manosphere/youtube-andrew-tate-claims-america-doesnt-have-free-speech-because-you-cant-speak-out

Andrew Tate claims the United States doesn’t have free speech because you can’t speak out against Jews.

Am I supposed to argue with him
in good faith, Jaybird?

Yes or no?

If someone is advocating blood libel against Jews and/or is a Leo Frank Truther, am I supposed to treat their argument with good faith? Yes or no answer only please.

Several years ago, I was representing some people in the maritime industry when a controversy bubbled up about some foreign company bidding to run some facilities in the port of Los Angeles, so I asked them about it. People in the shipping business don't get their panties in a twist about things like that, and many foreign companies, including Chinese companies, run U.S. terminals. (Singapore is particularly well-regarded in that respect, and based on what I saw about Singapore companies on another case, I'm not surprised.) Business is business.
There was never any reason to worry about the Hong Kong company running Panama Canal facilities. If an American-based company is now about to take over, it must have been in the works long before Trump decided to make hay about it. But we all know about the rooster who thinks his crowing makes the sun rise each morning.

https://rollcall.com/2025/03/05/supreme-court-orders-clarity-on-order-unfreezing-usaid-funds/

So, we have a bunch of Supreme Court justices showing their true colors there.

For those who do not remember what happened, a lawsuit was filed about USAID about the failure to pay debts that were already incurred and mandated by law, and Judge Amir Ali of the U.S. District Court issued an order saying 'No, you have to keep paying those for now, the law provides a way to claw back fraudulent purchases and it gives absolutely no ability to do what you are doing'.

They were given a deadline of fifteen days. Fifteen days passed.

The judge issued _another_ order, saying 'I am not kidding, do this in the next two days, or I will start throwing lawyers in jail for content'.

The government, having failed to follow the first court order, then panicked and tried to get the Supreme Court to step in. (Like, we're already at a bad place here. You can't fail to follow court orders for two weeks and then, at the deadline, run somewhere else.)

The Supremes did, pausing that order for a week, until they ruled. Well, that just happened, they said 'Of course you have to follow that, it's a judge, you're in a lawsuit, you have to do what he says.'. ...or at least, the people on the court who believe in some sort of rule of law did.

From others, you get this nonsense:

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise,” Alito wrote. “I am stunned.”

Hey, Alito, pssst: What compels the US government to release the funds is the _law_. Both appropriations and, perhaps more relevantly, normal contract law. They did the work, the government has to pay them. Which a judge just ruled on.

And they _did_ appeal it. To literally the Supreme Court. Were you not paying attention?

And how does a District of Columbia district court judge not have jurisdiction over 'Someone suing the Federal government for not getting paid, which was apparently done by decisions at the White House'? What are you talking about? Who has jurisdiction instead?!

Also, aren't you the same people who have no problem with a single Texas judge issuing restraining orders outlawing medications across the entire US?

--

Anyway, we have two fun questions here:

Will the US government decide to comply with this?

Who knows.

The second question is funnier: Can the US government comply with this, or is it so dysfunctional that it cannot put this stuff together in time?

They are already a week past the second deadline, which itself was a few days after the actual original deadline. The Supreme Court just said the judge should 'clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.', but honestly, as the Government has made absolutely no effort at any point to actually met any deadline, I suspect we're going to get Judge Amir Ali saying 'The first order of business today is where I make up a list of people who go to jail tomorrow if it is not done by then.'

The really really funny thing is if the US government cannot actually manage to do it in that timeframe, because the power to do it is in the hands of some 25-year-old techbro who does not actually understand the magnitude of what is going on, and possibly cannot be located in the timeframe because he's ran off to fire all gay people at the NSA or whatever.

Which sounds unfair, but I remind everyone the government had two weeks to do this, in which they did nothing, then had another week do to this, and if they again did nothing, and are not ready to actually do this, they deserve to be pretty strongly sanctioned by the court.

Yeah, for me at least, the worry isn't that Russia would launch its nukes at us. It's that if things got to the point that Russia was pressing the button, they wouldn't be the only one, and I'd bet most of China's increasingly modernized nukes work.

Okay. I don't care if Manicheanism is a heresy or not. Yes, there should be difficult conversations on contentious issues but there are limits and things must be conducted in good-faith.

I see very little reason to see that things conversations can happen with Trump supporters or Musk supporters. As pointed out above, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Defense is a Leo Frank truther. This is rank blood libel and anti-Semitic conspiracy. I'm not morally required to state confronting this as evil is a heresy and I am not required to debate Leo Frank truthism endlessly.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre